ATTENTION: Assignment Desk

10 October 2001
Contact: Media Relations Office
(510) 642-3734

WHAT:
Press conference with 2001 Nobel Prize co-winner in economics, UC Berkeley professor George A. Akerlof.

WHEN:
10 a.m. today (10/10/01).

WHERE:
Alumni House on the UC Berkeley campus near the Haas Pavilion.

WHO:
Professor Akerlof will be joined at the press conference by his wife, UC Berkeley professor Janet Yellen, who served as chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Others in attendance will be:
* Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl
* Alan Auerbach, chair of the UC Berkeley economics department
* Professor Daniel McFadden, 2000 Nobel Prize winner in economics

BACKGROUND:
George A. Akerlof is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a landmark study on the role of asymmetrical information in the market for "lemon" used cars.

Akerlof, 61, broke with established economic theory with his research illustrating how markets malfunction when buyers and sellers - as seen in used car markets - operate under different information. The work has had far-reaching applications in such diverse areas as health insurance, financial markets and employment contracts.

Akerlof is UC Berkeley's 18th Nobel Prize winner and the fourth economics professor at the university to be so honored. Gerard Debreu, a professor emeritus of economics and mathematics, won the prize in 1983. The now-deceased John Harsanyi, a professor of economics and business administration, won the Nobel Prize in 1994. Economics professor Daniel McFadden won the prize in October 2000.